Asked by: Matt Vickers (Conservative - Stockton West)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to support NHS Trusts with energy and estate maintenance costs.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Government’s 10-Year Health Plan commits to delivering a National Health Service that is fit for the future, and we recognise the importance of supporting NHS trusts to manage and maintain their estates using operational capital allocations.
The Government’s recently published 10 Year Infrastructure Strategy set out 10-year maintenance budgets for the public estate, confirming £6 billion per year for the maintenance and repair of the NHS estate up to 2034/35.
Within this overall figure, the Government is providing over £4 billion in operational capital in 2025/26 and has now allocated a further £15.6 billion directly to providers over the following four years, from 2026/27 to 2029/30. Providers have also been given further five-year operational capital planning assumptions covering 2030/31 to 2034/35, allowing them to plan longer term with confidence and accelerate investment decisions aligned to local priorities, including repairs and maintenance.
In addition to operational capital, the Estates Safety Fund, established in 2025/26, will continue, with £6.75 billion investment over the next nine years to target the most critical building repairs and ensure safe environments for healthcare delivery.
We also continue to support trusts to drive down their energy bills and boost their resilience. Since 2020 the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero has funded over £1 billion in NHS energy projects. This now being bolstered by the Department for Health and Social Care’s £130 million collaboration with Great British Energy. This is funding solar installations at approximately 260 NHS sites and is estimated to deliver lifetime energy bill savings for the NHS of up to £325 million, with the average NHS site estimated to save approximately £35,000 a year in energy bills.
Asked by: Matt Vickers (Conservative - Stockton West)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment he has made of the adequacy of ambulance response times in rural and semi-urban areas.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
We acknowledge that ambulance performance has not consistently met expectations in recent years, and we are taking serious steps to improve performance across the country including rural and semi-urban areas. That is why we published our Urgent and Emergency Care Plan for 2025/26, backed by almost £450 million of capital investment, which commits to reducing ambulance response times for Category 2 incidents to 30 minutes on average this year.
The National Health Service constitutional standards for ambulance response time metrics are measured with an average figure as well as a 90th centile standard which means that trusts are held to account for the response times they provide to all patients, improving the performance management of the ‘long tail’ of delayed ambulance responses that we know can particularly affect rural and semi-urban areas. Recent NHS England figures show a 23-minute improvement in the Category 2 90th centile response time compared with last year.
Local NHS integrated care boards (ICBs) are responsible for service commissioning decisions in their local communities, including ambulance provision for rural and semi-urban communities. ICB funding allocations for ambulance services take account of rurality and patient density to cover the longer travel distances to incidents and greater time required to convey patients to hospitals.
Asked by: Matt Vickers (Conservative - Stockton West)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to improve local mental-health crisis support.
Answered by Zubir Ahmed - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
Nationally, progress has been achieved in building more robust crisis care pathways across all ages and in all regions, ensuring that people in a mental health crisis can receive the right care. This includes the introduction of the ‘mental health’ option for NHS 111 and the opening of new mental health crisis centres to provide accessible and responsive care for individuals in a mental health crisis.
The 10-Year Health Plan sets out our ambitions to go further by developing up to 85 dedicated mental health emergency departments so that patients get fast, same-day access to specialist support in an appropriate setting. This expansion builds on a number of early implementer sites that have been established in recent years by local health systems to provide a dedicated therapeutic alternative to emergency departments for individuals in a mental health crisis.
The plan also sets out our plans to transform mental health services to improve access and treatment, and to promote good mental health and wellbeing for the nation. This includes improving assertive outreach, investing in neighbourhood mental health centres, and increasing access to talking therapies and evidence-based digital interventions.
Asked by: Matt Vickers (Conservative - Stockton West)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to enhance digital interoperability between NHS services.
Answered by Zubir Ahmed - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
Digital interoperability between National Health Services will be supported through the use of information standards, published under section 250 of the Health and Social Care Act 2012. This has been amended by the Health and Care Act 2022, and the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025, to make new information standards mandatory, including for regulated providers of health and adult social care, and including private providers, and their suppliers of IT services.
Information standards set the requirements, including data structure, that must be followed when health and adult social care information is used, shared, or otherwise processed, allowing for information to flow between organisations that use different systems, in real time. NHS England is introducing mandatory information standards in a staged process.
Asked by: Matt Vickers (Conservative - Stockton West)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment he has made of trends in the level of regional cancer survival outcomes; and what steps he is taking to reduce regional disparities.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
We know that more needs to be done to reduce the disparities in cancer survival. We remain committed to making improvements across different cancer types and reducing disparities in cancer survival. Early cancer diagnosis is also a specific priority within the National Health Service’s wider Core20Plus5 approach to reducing healthcare inequalities.
The 10-Year Health Plan sets out how the Government will shift the focus from care from the hospital to care the community, which will make it easier for people to access cancer screening, diagnostic, and treatment services in their local areas, with more choice for people on how and where they access these services. Services will be backed by the latest technology to drive up this country’s cancer survival rates.
The forthcoming National Cancer Plan, which we will publish in the new year, will look at targeted improvements needed across different cancer types to reduce disparities in cancer survival. The plan will seek to ensure that high-quality care and treatment is available to all patients across the country, no matter where they live. This will build on the current national cancer audits, which are seeking to promote best practice and aim to reduce inequalities in access to or the quality of treatment.
The National Cancer Plan will have patients at its heart and will cover the entirety of the cancer pathway, seeking to improve every aspect of cancer care, to better the experience and outcomes for people with cancer. Our goal is to reduce the number of lives lost to cancer over the next ten years. To do this, we will focus on prevention, deliver targeted improvements, drive research and innovation, and ensure patients have access to the latest treatments and technology.
Asked by: Matt Vickers (Conservative - Stockton West)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to expand preventative health programmes in communities with high chronic-disease prevalence.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
Our mission is to halve the gap in healthy life expectancy between rich and poor, through the 10-Year Health Plan. Our 10-Year Health Plan sets out how a shift to prevention will deliver healthier, more prosperous lives for all, but particularly for those suffering the consequences of widening levels of health inequality. We are committed to taking action to tackle both the chronic diseases themselves and the modifiable risk factors that contribute to them, including:
Asked by: Matt Vickers (Conservative - Stockton West)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment he has made of the effectiveness of community diagnostic centres in reducing pressure on hospitals.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
As set out in the Elective Reform Plan and the 10-Year Health Plan, community diagnostic centres (CDCs) are key to delivering on the Government’s ambition to move more planned care from hospitals to the community, reducing pressure on hospitals and delivering more convenient care close to home.
CDCs deliver additional, digitally connected, diagnostic capacity, providing patients with a co-ordinated set of diagnostic checks in the community in as few visits as possible, enabling an accurate and fast diagnosis on a range of clinical pathways.
Under the Government, CDCs have delivered over 9.4 million tests and scans since July 2024, supporting patients to access vital tests, scans, and checks around their busy working lives.
In August 2025, the Government confirmed that 100 CDCs across the country are now offering out of hours services by opening for 12 hours a day, seven days a week, meaning patients can access vital tests, scans, and checks around their busy working lives. We are committed to increasing this number further.
Asked by: Matt Vickers (Conservative - Stockton West)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what progress he has made on reducing delayed discharges from hospitals.
Answered by Zubir Ahmed - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Government is committed to tackling delayed discharges, to ensure patients do not remain in hospital longer than necessary and to free up hospital beds for patients that need them.
The Urgent and Emergency Care plan for 2025/26 sets as a priority that hospitals should tackle the delays in patients waiting to be discharged. They should eliminate discharge delays of more than 48 hours caused by in-hospital issues, and work with local authorities to tackle the longest delays, starting with those over 21 days, and to profile discharges by pathway to support local planning.
In January 2025, we published a new policy framework for the £9 billion Better Care Fund, which gives the National Health Service and local authorities accountability for setting and achieving joint goals for reducing discharge delays. Starting in the financial year 2026/27, we will reform the Better Care Fund, focusing on ensuring consistent joint NHS and local authority funding for services essential to integrated health and social care, such as hospital discharge, intermediate care, rehabilitation, and reablement.
Asked by: Matt Vickers (Conservative - Stockton West)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to help prevent industrial action in the NHS.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
My Rt Hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care and officials from the Department, on his behalf, regularly meet with representatives of the health trade unions to understand the views and concerns of the National Health Service’s workforces in England which they represent. He has been clear that he wants to continue to work constructively with all trade unions to improve the working conditions of all NHS staff and avoid unnecessary industrial action.
My Rt Hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care has accepted all headline pay recommendations from the independent pay review bodies for 2025/26 so that all NHS staff in England received a fair and sustainable pay rise, has committed to funding improvements to the Agenda for Change pay structure for staff such as porters, nurses, and paramedics, and is working with NHS England to implement a 10 point plan to improve resident doctors’ working lives.
My Rt Hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care made a written offer on 5 November to the British Medical Association Resident Doctors Committee (BMA RDC) which included measures to tackle bottlenecks in training, put money back in resident doctors' pockets and ensure that there is consistent implementation of existing contractual entitlements. Unfortunately, the BMA RDC rejected this just hours after being set out in a letter to them, instead choosing to proceed with the damaging strike action taken between 14-19 November.
Asked by: Matt Vickers (Conservative - Stockton West)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent steps he has taken to increase NHS capacity in winter 2025-26.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
We have done more than ever to prepare for this winter, including stress testing winter plans, making sure community teams have the vaccines they need, and identifying patients most vulnerable in winter.
The Urgent and Emergency Care (UEC) Plan for 2025/26, published on 6 June 2025, focuses on those improvements that will see the biggest impact on UEC performance this winter and on making UEC better every day, backed by a total of nearly £450 million of funding. The plan commits to increasing the number of patients receiving urgent care in the community by expanding services such as urgent community response, neighbourhood multidisciplinary teams and increasing the use of virtual wards, also known as hospital at home. This will support winter resilience by expanding and optimising services such as urgent community response and increasing the use of virtual wards in each integrated care system, as well as planning with the ambulance services and 111 how to use this capacity most effectively.